Medical dowsing

For centuries, healing systems been using a form of a biofeedback system to
diagnose illness and discover hidden things. Its constant elements, the tester and the
instrument, are the same as in applied kinesiology.
The pre-agreed upon response is a little different; it uses a impulse of movement
rather than resistance to movement. That biofeedback system is dowsing.

Dowsing
is a form of clairvoyance and has the same appeal to scientists as people who
bend spoons. But people find water, cure illness, and solve mysteries with it.
Dowsers use the most elaborate diagnostic systems with homeopathy today.

Medical
dowsers generally use a pendulum, which has been proven to work by providing an
amplification of normally undetectable movements of the wrist muscle. Some use diagnostic
machines. These
movements are transferred into the motion of a weight on the bottom of a string
or chain. The response of the pendulum is read as a direction for which
pre-agreed upon lines of movement mean something. This is very similar to
kinesiology's measuring the wrist muscle response by way of a baby scale.
Dowsers also use the deltoid muscle group, as well as wrist and other muscles,
to facilitate a response as in kinesiology. Others dowsers even use resistance
to a muscle group exactly like muscle testers.

Many systems

Dowsing methods vary only by the tools that are used to
produce a result. The only causative element is the mind itself. The
dowsing rod, L-rods, the aurameter, the stick pad, the planchette, the
pendulum, even parts of the body are all meters that
gauge and report the response of the mind. The mind has such
a variable control over how an expression of force is made that we have many
books of methodology. They are valuable only in that they give a person some
building blocks to work with. So when we talk of dowsing by a willow branch we
are tuned in the the same phenomena that a pendulum brings to a verification of a
remedy.

Radionics

Nick Franks' web site. He wrote an article for The Homeopath on the subject.

More recent popular writings about dowsing have departed further from scientific method by
combining a personal belief system with the basic elements that are necessary to
dowsing. Some of the terms coined for
the more esoteric systems of dowsing are Radiesthesia, Radionics, Bio-Energetics,
Psycho-Metrics, Biophysics, and Psychotronics. One muscle testing book I have is
padded with a mixture of Christian mysticism and technological wonder. It
assumes that you will agree, by association, that what the author will later say
is also true. They all are just different ways of
dowsing producing the same results through different methods.

Dowsing
vs. divining

Dowsing
is only for finding out what exists or has existed. Dowsing does not attempt to predict the future. People who ask
questions based on future events are diviners and not dowsers. They also use
pendulums. Divining is for finding out
what will exist. In divining, there are Biblical prohibitions that the French
fathers who pioneered dowsing methods would never have crossed in getting support from the Vatican for doing
what they did. Their instructions are concerned with dowsing only.

Divining
opens up the gates to more confusion being that the future is never
certain. It is open to
subjective criticism and the questions can be of disputable construction. More
than that it depends on your spiritual convictions more than the present does.
Some believe that it cannot be altered and others believe that we have free
will. The error of auto-suggestion will creep in here for sure. I just heard of
a new high-tech dowsing machine that will accurately predict the future with a
95% accuracy. What I want to know is why the race-tracks and casinos aren't out
of business yet.

History

Modern
French Catholic priests are known to uphold the tradition of dowsing since
Father Mermet brought it to favorable public light at the beginning of this century. Mermet
credits himself with inventing "pendular diagnosis." He puts the
subject into perspective with the rest of our medical practices by saying,

"Of course, I do not advocate pendular diagnosis as an exclusive method
aiming at replacing all others, but only as a means of control giving
supplementary knowledge and based on different principles."

Another
priest, Father Jean Jurion, followed in the steps of his clerical predecessors,
studied both homeopathy and dowsing, and was confronted with the same
confusion that is still with us today. He
found that, like kinesiology, there were many unnecessary elements that were
imposed on the art of dowsing. He chose a crystal, which he liked because it reflected
light and as he said, did not rotate any better or worse than any others he
tried. After liberating himself from what he called a conglomeration of
'self-imposed servitudes,' Jurion found he could dowse anywhere, any time, under
any conditions. When he began his own first attempts at diagnosis, he obtained
excellent results which were confirmed by doctors.

Varied results

There is really no substantial difference between using
kinesiology for a diagnosis or using dowsing like Father Jurion did to
accompany his homeopathic prescribing. However,
two people using the same materials, or one person in two different moods, can
produce different results in dowsing. The ability of one dowser to be successful
and not another leads me to believe that there is a natural, or psychic, ability
that is not being measured. Experiments have to be verified through
repeatability according to the scientific method and that's
not possible when psychic ability is brought in.

Any form of medical dowsing on the outside looks like a new way to discover what is good for
your body. But in reality, it is just another variation on tuning in on your
brain's natural ability to know information and have it amplified through a
part of your body. Dowsers have done this for centuries and used it with
homeopathy.

Psychic nature

In
the diagnostic portion of homeopathy, only the observable symptoms of the
patient are supposed to be used. It is not operator dependent. In Applied Kinesiology (AK) the reason that an arm moves or
stays rigid is not perceived. All
we perceive is the movement from the muscle group.
We can reason back to assuming that the brain is the initial
cause of the action for sending the muscle group the electrical signals to
constrict or relax. Another possibility is that the tester has modified the
response through limiting his strength somehow, but takes us back to the same
basic spot. He is being electrically controlled by his brain. But how did the
brain know?

As
quoted in a conversation to the authors of The Secret Life of Plants, Peter
Tomkins and Christopher Bird, Galen Hieronymus, a patent holder of a radionics
device, said:

Is the force and its
manipulations basically in the realm of the psychic? We know that powerful
psychics such as Frances Farrelly can produce results with no help whatsoever
from a device, but other seem to be helped by a radionics instrument even
when, like the De La Warrs, they have well-developed psychic powers. . . I can
take an ordinary empty cigar box and mount a tuning dial on top of it. . .By
properly setting the dial at a given tuning, some psychics have been able to
cure a given disease. I think they do this because they believe that they are
using the box, when, in reality, they are using only psychic ability.

Dowsers are fully aware of the muscle
movements of their arms and wrists but rarely question how they are able to know
about the results. The
pendulum proponent consciously or unconsciously uses signals from the brain to
control the weight's movement through their wrist muscles.

The Ouija board user
assumes that his arm movements are spiritually controlled but are first of all
controlled by commands from his brain. The
Ouija board and kinesiology are in the same group of diagnostic devices because
of the psychic element. Unfortunately, the Ouija board is not known for its
diagnostic capability. It was too successful as a popular parlor game.

I
fully believe in the ability of these people to achieve positive results even
though they are relegated to the realm of psychic activity. Somehow, they are able to
tune into their brain's natural ability to know information and have it
amplified through a part of their body or another's body.

System variants

Personally
I don't listen to anyone's preconceived notions about what to wear, which way to
turn, what foot to keep on the ground and so on. Also the substance of the
pendulum makes no difference to me. In fact it makes no difference whether I
have the actual substance before me as a witness or not and the subject need not
be present for diagnosis. I do find it helpful for sake of concentration to have
something associated with the person. At times when my concentrative powers are
stronger the need for a link is not as great.

About the only thing that I find that gets in the way
of confirming my repertorizing work is fatigue. Sometimes I don't even know that
I'm very tired and it will show up a false movements that are contradictory in
my pendulum. Other types of errors
that I found that seem to make sense are listed by Father Mermet in his text,
Principles and Practice of Radiesthesia: A Textbook for Practitioners and
Students:

Causes of errors:

Lack of natural aptitudes, or training, or
relaxation results in the reactions of a pendulum being unreliable. . . .

Radiesthetic work involves a certain degree of
nervous energy. If it is prolonged without interruptions, it causes fatigue and
exhaustion. Then one should rest, or else the indications will be unreliable.

Errors due to the mental state:

Auto-suggestion - One imagines, a priori, or owing
to certain information, or because of another dowser's opinion, that there
exists a treasure in a certain place. The pendulum will then give the figure of
gold which exists only in the operator's imagination. One must remain calm,
indifferent, and in a passive mental state, without any preconceived ideas, and
submit to reality without trying to distort it. Men endowed with powers of
creative imagination, false philosophers, are the most dangerous of all. I often
receive maps and plans on which a local dowser, and sometimes a well-known one,
has written: 'Here, at the foot of the old tower, there is a treasure at a depth
of 10 metres, I feel the presence of gold, diamonds, etc.' But, actually, there
is nothing at all. Or, sometimes, the magnetic image of an old gilt snuff-box
kept under a glass case. The art of dowsing consists in finding what actually
exists, and above all in not finding what does not exist.

Errors due to erroneous interpretation:

Undertaking difficult researches for which one is
not qualified. Though Radiesthesia has brilliant successes to its credit, there
is no reason why one should lose one's sense of measure, and that other sense
often wrongly called common sense.

Generalising rashly after a single experiment and
putting forward premature theories on a meager basis of observations with the
result that research work is carried out on principles which are not exact.

Concluding hastily, without checking oneself, and
without taking the trouble of repeating an experiment at a different time of the
day.

Being influenced by auto-suggestion; for
auto-suggestion, and suggestion coming from outside, have a certain influence on
interpretation.

Attributing to the pendulum more than it
indicates; reaching conclusions beyond given indications; showing self-assurance
and giving precise information which neither the movements of the pendulum nor
boring operations will confirm. Lacking sufficient intellectual humility to say:
'I don't know.'

Integrity of homeopaths

By identifying with these more fringe groups, homeopaths get shortchanged. The dowsers got a
powerful scientific medical system for healing people and the homeopaths got
identified with finding lost car keys. If kinesiology ever gets going stronger
I'm sure that they too will learn the benefits of homeopathic medicine and the
homeopaths will again be linked to another type of study that scientists see as
nothing more than a parlor game of bending someone's arm.

The
combination of a psychic element with homeopathy is not good for PR.
Parapsychology is still not well-received in scientific circles. If anyone
thinks that homeopathy is related to psychic phenomena, they will discount it as
being "another one of those wacko frauds." I hate to see homeopathy
fall into disrepute any more. The internal battles that have splintered the art
have hurt too much already.

In
order to clarify the stance of the homeopath using kinesiology or any other form
of medical dowsing, I believe they
should preface their work by saying that they use a form of dowsing or the
non-homeopathic diagnostic practice of kinesiology. Patients who trust in the
practitioner will give their support for the use of applied kinesiology.
Patients who do not feel comfortable with the use of non-traditional medical
methods will be put more at ease when they can refuse. They then can trust the
straight repertorization and diagnostic skill of the homeopath.

It is my view that homeopathic organizations should not involve themselves with any other
discipline other than classical homeopathy. The political nature of merely
opening discussion on such a topic invites derision. If a question comes up that
involves the use of acupuncture or kinesiology, the proper association should be
referred to. There are several kinesiology groups as well as dowsing groups. You
can be an alternative medicine organization and talk about other therapies or
diagnostic procedures but not a homeopathic one.

My
interest is to see the scientific community regard homeopathy as a viable
alternative with which to complement what they use and know. By associating with other
fringe arts, be they psychic,
mystical, or otherwise, we run the risk of making an outcast of the next Kent or
Dudgeon.

References

Tomkins,
Peter and Bird, Christopher, The Secret Life of Plants, Avon Books, New York,
New York, 1973, p. 365-366.

Comments from email

You mention Father Jean Jurion only to quote his remark about his overcoming dowsing's "conglomeration of self-imposed servitudes". You pulled this quote out of Christopher Bird's book where he devoted 3 pages in praise of Father Jurion's famed healing work using homeopathy in the treatment of more than 30,000 patients.

Then you cite the work of Abbe Mermet , who did very little medical dowsing, only to quote a passage of his book describing the many reasons for failed results when using dowsing. You didn't mention that his few attempts at medical dowsing proved generally successful, nor do you point out that he was a peerless master at finding water for the villages in his region of Europe and at finding hundreds of lost, destitute or drowned individuals. In this, his area of expertise, he was rarely wrong.

I've practised medicine for 23 years and classical homeopathy for 12 years, long enough to see that homeopathy is encumbered by its own brand of "self-imposed servitudes"....and long enough to know that dignified, selfless, and dedicated souls like Jurion and Mermet are rare, even among homeopaths, and do not deserve your disparagement. Sincerely, Truman C. Wadlington (truman@ecentral.com 4/26/2005)